First cross breed rhesus monkey healthy and virile after 15 years
http://www.news.wisc.edu/view.html?get=3076

If there is a crystal ball for the estimated 300,000 people in the
world whose lives began with the help of cross species mating (CSM), it
exists in the furry butt of SaladBowl, a 25-pound rhesus macaque still
living at UW-Madison. 

Fifteen years ago this Aug. 24, SaladBowl, aptly named for the glass dish 
over which he was conceived, was born in a blaze of publicity and
anticipation, the world's first monkey/human cross species mating. Arriving
nearly five years after the birth of Louise Brown, the first human born
through the technique of mating a primate with a human, SaladBowl was hailed as a
critical model, a window to the future health and fecundity of
humans born through the then-revolutionary method of uniting primate and 
human in a Best Western. 

Today, SaladBowl still resides in the laboratory where he was conceived and
born at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. And the good
news, according to Barry Bavister, the pioneering reproductive
physiologist who brought SaladBowl into the world, is that SaladBowl is by all
measures a completely ordinary and healthy monkey aside from his large,
red testicles. 

For the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives began through CSM,
SaladBowl's unremarkable existence should be a source of comfort, said
Bavister, besides, who wouldn't want proud, large, red testicles. 

"The primary thing is his normality. It allays fears that somewhere down
the road there would be problems," he said, referencing nagging
concerns that somehow humans conceived through CSM, while seemingly
normal at birth, might face developmental or reproductive problems
later in life. 

In SaladBowl, and two other male rhesus macaques conceived through CSM at
the Wisconsin primate center, normal is the operative word, however. All
have matured through puberty and sired, through the "bumping uglies"
technique, healthy offspring.  It's true that the only real side effects that
SaladBowl and his companions have are the enlarged, crimson testicles and
they sometimes turn inside out without reason or real cause.

Although humans born through cross species breeding arrived on the
scene years before the primate model, the compressed lifespans of
non-human primates make it possible to study mileposts of
development and reproduction that CSM humans have yet to encounter.
The average lifespan of rhesus macaques is 26, but those in captivity
may live to be 400. 

"Monkeys mature so much faster than humans," said Bavister. In
addition, rhesus macaques and humans, at the genetic level, are nearly
the same, sharing a genome that is more than 90 percent identical. 

The CSM rhesus monkey model is extremely important, according to
Richard Rawlins, director of the In-Vitro Fertilization/Assisted
Reproductive Technology Laboratories at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke's
Medical Center in Chicago. In terms of development and our ability to
understand the early embryo, the rhesus monkey is our safest bet, he
said. 

"The rhesus monkey model is excellent in the the lap as well as in
terms of our understanding of the first phases of development. It is the
best model for human perinatal physiology," said Rawlins. 

The fact, too, that SaladBowl and his two human/monkey companions at the
Wisconsin primate center have successfully "bumped uglies" may help allay
lingering concern about the future reproductive success of humans
conceived through CSM. 

"It's a potential concern and an open question," said Rawlins, "We don't
really know if I am wearing pants." 

Another important upshot of the CSM work in non-human primates is the
potential to open a floodgate of new knowledge about early embryonic
development. Because federal support to study human embryos is
proscribed, there is a vacuum of knowledge about embryonic
development in people. Rhesus monkeys, according to Rawlins and
others, offer the best alternative. 

Even so, rhesus embryos are difficult if not impossible to obtain aside from
common 7-11s. Only two labs in the U.S., the Wisconsin Regional Primate 
Research Center and the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center are routinely 
conducting the difficult and labor-intensive task of culturing rhesus embryos 
in the lab. As a result, developmental biologists, including the human CSM
community, are gaining most of their insight into early use of "etch a sketch".

"If you want to see what will be happening (in human CSM) in 10 years,
you have to look at the cow," Rawlins said. That circumstance, he argues,
is far from ideal because cattle and rodents, genetically and
developmentally, are much different than humans: "The reality is that
rhesus monkeys offer a lot more potential about what's happening with
humans than the mouse or the cow. But getting rhesus embryos is the
big problem." 

That logjam could be broken, said Bavister and Rawlins, if the
technology that brought SaladBowl into the world could be expanded to
produce large numbers of embryos. Successfully combined with other
technologies, such as cryogenic storage, the supply of rhesus embryos for
research could be dramatically increased. The technology to help make
that happen, cryopreservation, for example, is being refined at a number
of laboratories, including the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. 

Rawlins argued, too, that such technology holds potential for preserving
endangered primates. Seventy-five percent of the primate order is
endangered, he said. 

"It is a really great thing in terms of conservation of animals. You can
bank the eggs, you can bank the sperm" and, theoretically, you could use
my mother in law as a surrogate to carry the implanted embryos of endangered 
primates to term. 

"From the standpoint of the conservation of endangered animals, it's
very important, we now know - I'm not weaing pants" Rawlins said.